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6.6. Updating Virtual Machine Guest Agents and Drivers

The Red Hat Virtualization guest agents, tools, and drivers provide additional functionality for virtual machines, such as gracefully shutting down or rebooting virtual machines from the VM Portal and Administration Portal. The tools and agents also provide information for virtual machines, including:

  • Resource usage
  • IP addresses
  • Installed applications

The guest tools are distributed as an ISO file that you can attach to virtual machines. This ISO file is packaged as an RPM file that you can install and update from the Manager machine.

Update the guest agents and drivers on your Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machines to use the latest version.

Updating the Guest Agents and Drivers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

  1. Log in to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machine.

  2. Update the ovirt-guest-agent-common package: 

    # yum update ovirt-guest-agent-common

  3. Restart the service:

    • For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 

      # service ovirt-guest-agent restart

    • For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 

      # systemctl restart ovirt-guest-agent.service

Updating the Guest Agents, Tools, and Drivers on Windows

  1. On the Red Hat Virtualization Manager machine, update the Red Hat Virtualization Guest Tools package to the latest version: 

    # yum update -y rhv-guest-tools-iso*

    The ISO file is located in /usr/share/rhv-guest-tools-iso/RHV-toolsSetup_version.iso on the Manager machine.

  2. If the APT service is enabled on virtual machines, the updated ISO files are automatically attached. Otherwise, upload RHV-toolsSetup_version.iso to a data domain. See Uploading Images to a Data Storage Domain in the Administration Guide for details.
  3. In the Administration or VM Portal, if the virtual machine is running, use the Change CD drop-down list to attach the RHV-toolsSetup_version.iso file to each of your virtual machines. If the virtual machine is powered off, click the Run Once button and attach the ISO as a CD.
  4. Log in to the virtual machine.
  5. Select the CD Drive containing the RHV-toolsSetup_version.iso file.
  6. Double-click RHEV-toolsSetup.exe.
  7. Click Next at the welcome screen.
  8. Follow the prompts on the RHEV-Tools InstallShield Wizard window. Ensure all check boxes in the list of components are selected.
  9. Once installation is complete, select Yes, I want to restart my computer now and click Finish to apply the changes.
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